Portland's Best Locally Made Perfumes

You eat local, you shop local, you keep it weird. So wearing local fragrances is just plain good scents.

Perfumer Josh Meyer and marketing partner Ashod Simonian have teamed up to create an an innovative line which employs the literary world as its backdrop by pairing each handcrafted scent with a short, imaginative bio of a fictional author. The constantly-updating collection of perfumes is complicated, diverse, and ideal for the aspiring author who also wants to smell nice. Meyer says the newest scent is usually his favorite, so try A City on Fire, developed exclusively for modern menswear store Machus. The perfume,“a brilliantly dark graphic novel,” is a smoke accord with notes of cade oil, spikenard, cardamom, clearwood, dark berries, labdanum, and burnt match.

This Alphabet District shop, founded and owned by Jasmine Tran, emphasizes the aromatherapeutic side of fragrance with a focus on creating balanced scents. Essance offers essential oils for the body as well as mist sprays punctuated by floral, citrus or woodsy notes. Don’t toss the bottle when the product runs dry—return it to Essance for recycling and receive a discount on future purchases as well as the satisfaction that you’ve contributed to a green-minded local apothecary.

Heather Sielaff is a self-taught perfumist with a background in aromatherapy, and her Belmont store Milk Milk Lemonade straddles the border between minimal and comfortable. Sielaff forgoes alcohol in favor of oil-based coconut to allow her handmade scents to mingle naturally with the body chemistry of each wearer, creating a more intimate individual experience. Her unisex products are made with essential oils, absolutes, and key accords.